


Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

by 0bviousLeigh



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Fluff, LORD I AM SUCH TRASH FOR THESE THREE, M/M, Post-Series, Romance, Stolenshipping - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:53:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7763920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bviousLeigh/pseuds/0bviousLeigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Yuma's birthday, and he wants to spend it camping with Kite and Ryoga. (Post series-ending. For Zexal Month. Prompt : Love)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

Yuma’s been camping with his family since he was a baby. He can put up a tent in his sleep, he can spark a fire from rocks, and he knows exactly how to survive if he was left on his own. But Kite and Ryoga have never been camping, so where is the fun in taking the experience away from them?

Ryoga bares his teeth and growls. “I’m going to shove this pole so far up your ass your grandkids will be constipated.”

Kite glares at Ryoga. “Do it, I would love to see how you put this stupid thing up without it.”

Yuma barely holds in laughter, recording the entire thing on his gazer’s camera. For his birthday, he begged Kite and Ryoga to take him camping, just the three of them. Maybe four, if Astral turns up, but for now it’s just the three of them. Yuma didn’t even offer to put up the tent, Kite grabbed the instructions from him and said it couldn’t be harder than building a robot from scratch.

“Is it even the right way around?” Ryoga asks, leaning over to snatch the instructions from Kite’s hands.

Kite leans away. “I can read, thank you very much.”

Ryoga crawls over, grabbing for the paper, and Kite leans away, and they end up falling over in a tangle of limbs, rolling around on top of the tent.

Yuma stops recording, puts his gazer away, and goes over to Kite and Ryoga, only to sit on them.

“What the hell?” Ryoga sputters, twisting around. He’s on Kite’s back, and Kite is on the bottom of the pile, still wheezing that he knows what he’s doing.

“Give me the instructions,” Yuma says, plucking the paper from Kite’s hands. “I’ll set up the tent, how about you two go get some firewood?”

Yuma stands and helps Kite and Ryoga to their feet. They brush off their clothes, glare at each other, and stomp into the woods.

“So good to see them getting along,” Yuma says to himself as he goes about righting the mess Ryoga and Kite made.

 

“That’s going to be too wet.”

Ryoga glares at Kite. “Get your own wood and leave me alone.” Kite is correct, but Ryoga was just getting ready to walk away from the damp log when he opened his mouth. Ryoga moves to pick up a large stick, and yanks his hand back with a yelp when he sees a spider crawling on it.

“What!?” Kite cries, looking around wildly.

“Spider,” Ryoga mutters, wiping his hands on his jeans. Now he feels like things are crawling on his skin.

Kite suddenly drops the sticks he’s collected and starts frantically brushing his shirt off. “Shitshitshitshit,” he says, “I forgot spiders were a _thing._ ” He turns around. “Is anything on my back?”

“No,” Ryoga says. “You’re good.”

Kite eyes the pile of wood on the ground. He kicks at it, and gingerly begins to pick the sticks up once more. Ryoga helps him, equally wary. When they’re done, they catch each other’s eye and start laughing.

“We’ve saved the world twice, but I still hate spiders,” Kite says, shaking his head. “This isn’t even the worst place to be. At least there’s people, bathroom facilities, an electrical outlet…Yuma does this kind of thing in the middle of nowhere.”

Ryoga nods, looking worried. “He fits in to a more active lifestyle. Sometimes I wonder how much longer he’s going to stick around for.”

“Are you kidding?” Kite scoffs, masking his own fears over that same thing, “Yuma could never leave Heartland, all of his friends are there.” ‘ _We’re there,_ ’ Kite thinks to himself.

 

The sun sets, the tent is set up, the sleeping bags are rolled out, and Yuma gets a nice fire going. Kite takes the hotdogs from the cooler, Ryoga unpacks the skewers, and the three of them sit on beach blankets around the fire and make dinner. Kite sits on one side of the fire, with Yuma and Ryoga across from him, practically in each other’s laps. A few people from neighboring campsites pass by, and they all wave to them, and Yuma waves back, which Kite finds a little creepy.

“You don’t even know them,” Kite says as Yuma waves enthusiastically to a young couple.

“No, but they’re camping!” Yuma says. “Camping is like dueling, your heart links up to people you meet.”

“Uh-huh,” Ryoga says, eyeing the trees. “I’ll remember that at 3 AM when I hear footsteps in the woods. This is a friggin horror movie waiting to happen.”

Yuma laughs and slings his arm over Ryoga’s shoulder. “I’ll protect you,” he coos, kissing Ryoga’s cheek. Ryoga blushes bright red, and Yuma kisses his cheek again. Ryoga turns his head slightly and it’s all the invitation Yuma needs to kiss him again, this time on the lips, and Ryoga melts as one kiss turns to two, then three, then more, until Yuma nearly drops his skewer and remembers that there’s food. Kite watches without envy. Ryoga and Yuma are sweet with each other, the way they ought to be. Sometimes Kite wonders if they feel pressured to act a certain way around him, because he is several years older than they are. But as Kite has said, it’s not like he’s had much time for dating experience himself.

After the hotdogs are gone, Yuma breaks out the marshmallows.

“Seriously?” Kite asks as Yuma tears into the bag. “You just had dinner.”

“ _Whaaaat?_ ” Yuma whines, “It’s practically illegal to ignore a perfectly good bag of marshmallows when there’s a campfire going!” He stabs a marshmallow with his skewer and holds it over the fire. “When was the last time you guys roasted marshmallows?”

Kite has to think about that. “Maybe…eight years?” He’s twenty now, that seems about right.

“Same,” Ryoga says quietly.

Yuma gapes. “Jeez, well don’t just sit there, have a marshmallow!” He chucks the bag at Kite. “Go on, have a little fun, have some sugar, it’s good for you!”

Kite’s not that hungry, so he passes the bag off to Ryoga. Ryoga skewers a marshmallow and holds it over the fire.

“Not like that!” Yuma says, adjusting Ryoga’s positioning of the stick. “Hold it up more, so it heats up slowly—that’s how they get all gooey on the inside. You want it golden, not burned.”

Ryoga does as Yuma says, but it’s not the marshmallow he’s paying attention to—it’s Yuma. The sun is low, and the light from the fire and the reflection of the pink sky illuminate Yuma in a way that makes him look like his skin is golden and his eyes are ruby-red.

‘ _He looks like a treasure,_ ’ Kite thinks. He is a treasure—precious, valued, and loved by everyone he meets. He’s so pure, and sure he can be annoying sometimes, and too trusting, but there’s something special about a person who always sees the best in people, no matter how many times they’ve been hurt and what horrors they’ve seen. Yuma has seen horrors. He’s lived them. Kite knows that one day, the past is going to catch up to Yuma. He’s going to break, as he’s broken before. But things will be different. Yuma will have Astral, Ryoga, and Kite, his friends, and his parents will all be there to hold him up when he falls.

“Done!” Yuma says happily, and it jolts Kite from his thoughts. Yuma takes a bite out of the marshmallow, sugar clinging to his lips as he gasps, “Hot!”

“No, shit,” Ryoga says, “It just came out of the fire!”

Yuma snorts through a mouthful of burned sugar and says thickly, “Yeah but that’s what makes it good!”

‘ _God, he’s so pure,_ ’ Kite thinks. As he should be. He’s only fifteen, he has plenty of time to become a jaded old soul, like Kite is. Like Ryoga pretends to be.

“Yuma,” Kite says, a realization coming to him, “You have to make a wish. It’s your birthday.”

Yuma’s eyes widen briefly, but then he smiles. “It’s okay, I already got all my wishes.”

Ryoga yanks his marshmallow out of the fire and buries his face in his hands. “Jesus H. Christ,” he mutters, “I can’t take it, Kite I can’t take it with this kid, did he really just say that and mean it?”

Kite knows the feeling.

“Whaaaat?!” Yuma whines, “It’s true!”

“It’s CHEESY!” Ryoga screams, “Or it should be but…ugh, UGH. From you it just…!” Ryoga stuffs his marshmallow into his mouth, glowering mutinously.

Yuma bursts into laughter. “Shark, you’re so cute!”

Ryoga looks ready to stab someone with his skewer.

Yuma takes another marshmallow from the bag and holds it over the fire. He looks up towards the sky. “The stars are going to be out soon. Maybe we can go down to the lake and do some stargazing later.” He continues in that vein for a few minutes, and Kite kind of zones out, content to watch the way Yuma oozes energy and joy, even when doing something as simple as roasting a marshmallow.

‘I already got all my wishes,’ Yuma said. And he means it. Kite wonders what that could possibly feel like, to be so happy that you don’t want a single thing, that you can’t think of one wish to make for yourself on your birthday? Sometimes Kite wonders what on earth he did to make Yuma want him. Okay, he died on the moon, that’s one good thing he did. He came back from the dead to give Yuma encouragement. But Kite did a lot of things to hurt Yuma, too. How does someone completely forgive a person for all that? Kite could live a hundred years and never be as good a person as Yuma is.

“Kite?”

“Hmm?” Kite says, blinking rapidly. A golden marshmallow is shoved under his nose.

“Have a bite,” Yuma says, leaning closer.

Kite hesitates. Yuma pokes the marshmallow into his lips. “Go on,” Yuma encourages.

Kite opens his mouth and takes a bite. Warm, gooey, sugary-sweet—Kite hasn’t forgotten what a marshmallow tastes like, but he didn’t expect the rush of nostalgia that came with it.

Yuma takes the marshmallow away and shoves the entire rest of it into his mouth, and somehow he still manages to get residue all over his lips. He licks it off, and catches Ryoga watching him as he does.

“You’ve got some, too,” Yuma says.

“Where?” Ryoga asks.

Yuma leans over and straight-up licks the corner of Ryoga’s mouth before kissing him soundly. Yuma leans back, smirking. “Right there, but I got it,” he says smugly.

Ryoga looks about as shocked as Kite feels.

Yuma laughs. “Can’t let good marshmallow go to waste.”

Kite holds out his hand. “Give me that damn bag.”

Yuma hands Kite the bag, then crawls into his lap. “You didn’t escape the marshmallow goo, either,” Yuma says, right before he licks his way into Kite’s mouth.

Kite drops the bag of marshmallows and grips Yuma’s waist, pulling him closer. Yuma’s fingers tangle in Kite’s hair, and he pulls back to nip Kite’s lower lip before diving right into another kiss. Kite feels like a swarm of butterflies took up residence in his torso.

Yuma leans back, grinning. “I think I got it.”

“Got what?” Kite blurts before he remembers what started this whole thing in the first place.

Yuma laughs, even Ryoga laughs, and Kite takes a marshmallow from the bag and throws it at Ryoga’s head.

“Oye!” Yuma scolds, “No wasting marshmallows!” He climbs off Kite’s lap and snatches the marshmallow bag. “You’re cut off from kisses.”

“Yeah, Kite,” Ryoga says, “What’s the matter with you?”

Kite rolls his eyes, but he does move to sit on the other side of the fire, on Yuma’s other side, and he finally decides to roast a marshmallow himself.

The three of them sit in relative silence, content to just enjoy each other’s company for the time being. After a while Yuma leans back and looks up at the sky, only to frown.

“Aww, it’s too cloudy for stargazing,” he says with a pout.

Ryoga pokes at the dying fire with his skewer. “We could go to the lake anyway,” he says with a shrug. “It’s your birthday. What do you want?”

Yuma doesn’t answer for a long time, and Kite realizes that it’s because he’s thinking really hard about whatever it is he’s about to say.

“Yuma?” Kite prompts.

Yuma keeps his head tilted towards the sky, but Kite can see a blush on his cheeks. “I meant it when I said I got what I wished for,” Yuma murmurs. “I still have Astral. I have both of you, too. I have friends, my sister, my parents, and my grandma. I got to go camping with both of you. I guess if…if there’s one thing I want…can both of you…” he takes a deep breath. “Tell me you love me?”

The feeling. The feeling that explodes in Kite’s chest at those words. It’s almost painful, how sweet those words are, how raw and open they are, and how so very _Yuma_ they are. And Kite’s very soul seems to call out, screaming yes, I do love you, Yuma, god knows when it happened or how I came to fall so deeply in love with you and everything you are, but it happened and I’m so glad it did.

“I love you.”

Kite and Ryoga say it at the same time, and it’s evident in their voices that they mean it with every fiber of their beings.

Yuma bows his head, and his shoulders shake. He’s crying, Kite realizes.

Ryoga puts his arm over Yuma’s shoulders, and Kite does the same. They lean in to Yuma, and they hold him between them. Yuma laughs and cries at the same time.

“Thank you,” he says between deep breaths. “I love you both…so much.”

Ryoga nuzzles Yuma’s cheek and strokes his hair. “We know you do.”

If someone like Yuma can love Kite and Ryoga so honestly…well, maybe Kite was wrong. Maybe he doesn’t need to live a hundred years to be as good a person as Yuma is.

**Author's Note:**

> /FLAILS/
> 
> R U FEELING THE LOVE?


End file.
